Out of Order

I’m a little tired. Muscles feel weak, little aching in the joints. I think I have Clinton fatigue.

I think that to this point I have exercised an incredible amount of restraint in refraining from intensive criticism of Senator Clinton in an attempt to retain some semblance of fairness in my coverage of this primary. No more of that. The senator has made it completely impossible to maintain balance. While it may be true that there are at least two sides to every story, not all stories are created equal. And while some stories may well be worth reading and discussing, others deserve to be scorned, mocked and exposed for the absolute drivel they are. See below.

In a last ditch attempt to salvage a lost campaign, Hillary Clinton sent a letter to members of the Democratic National Committee and remaining uncommitted superdelegates, imploring them to give her the party’s nomination despite the fact that she currently trails Senator Obama in the delegate count, with no chance of overtaking him prior to the end of the primary campaign. She believes that after the final three primaries she will have the majority of popular votes (if Florida and Michigan are counted as is - which they should not/will not be) and pledged delegates from states holding primaries, and on the strength of that she feels she should be rewarded with the nomination. Of course, Senator Obama will still maintain a lead in pledged delegates (the only measure of victory in this campaign), but that’s of no concern to Clinton. She would like superdelegates to disregard the results of states which held caucuses because she believes the caucus process “disenfranchises” too many voters.

Maybe Senator Clinton inhaled too much of whatever President Clinton didn’t. Some states use caucuses to select delegates, some use primaries. Everybody knows this - it’s been this way for quite some time. Clinton never voiced any objection to the caucus process - until she lost them. Then, in the same breath in which she fights to include the results of illegitimate elections in Michigan and Florida (which she initially agreed were illegitimate), she discounts entire states because she didn’t work hard enough to win them. There was no obstacle to Clinton opening up massive grassroots operations in caucus states and turning out enough voters to win those contests. She simply chose not to do it, and then whine about it later. She didn’t lose the contest, no, the contest must have been illegitimate. Where does it end?

While the rest of the Democratic Party has been trying to play by the rules, Senator Clinton and her supporters have been playing a game of Calvin-ball. When this process began in January, every candidate, by their entry into the process, agreed to function by the same set of rules. Rules known and understood by everyone. Senator Clinton was more than happy to play by those rules - until she discovered she was losing. Then, the rules didn’t matter anymore. In fact, the rules were whatever she said they always had been. Prior to (the initial) Super Tuesday, the pledged delegate count was the only measure of victory. Following Super Tuesday, the popular vote count needed to be taken into account. After Obama ripped off eleven victories in a row, and overtook Clinton in the popular vote count, that was no longer as important as the ability of the superdelegates not to follow the will of the voters in their districts. Once her superdelegate lead began to evaporate, the inclusion of votes from Michigan and Florida became imperative. Never mind that Clinton is on record admitting prior to the Michigan primary that she knew it would count for nothing. Never mind the fact that even though Michigan voters physically could not vote for anyone but Clinton, 41 percent of them showed up to vote against her. Once she needed Michigan and Florida to close the gap with her rival, every vote had to count, regardless of how meaningless, how fraudulent, how racist it may be.

Hillary Clinton is desperate. For her, this is no longer about being elected president. This is about winning - whatever the cost. She is well aware that she is doing irreparable damage to Barack Obama’s impending presidential campaign. She simply doesn’t care. She has waited 20 plus years, put up with all of Bill Clinton’s affairs, burned six years in the senate representing a state she has no connection to, all leading up to the moment when she would receive the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. All of a sudden, some skinny no name Hawaiian kid from the South Side of Chicago bursts onto the scene, captures the imagination of the nation and snatches the prize from under her nose. She is convinced the electorate is making a grave mistake - that when it comes down to the wire in November and Americans step into that voting booth, they will not vote for the black guy, and she deserves the to be president. She’s angry and she’s hurt. And she has decided that if she cannot be president, she will ensure that Obama will not be either. Whether it involves invoking the assassination of Robert Kennedy to justify remaining in the race, to raising the specter of rigged Zimbabwean elections to frighten the DNC Rules Committee into giving her Michigan and Florida as is, she will go to any length to guarantee herself an “I told you so” moment this fall. New face, same old Clinton strategy. Get ready for four years of Bush lite.

Well, on to lighter things then.

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has written a book claiming that President Bush “manipulated sources of information” with a “sophisticated propaganda campaign” to deceive the American public into supporting an unnecessary war. What? There’s gambling in this establishment? It would have been nice if McClellan had come forward with this information while it was still relevant, but I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it too, right? (That has got to be the dumbest saying ever culled from literature. Of course you want to have your cake and eat it too! What the hell else are you going to do with it? What’s the point of having cake if you aren’t going to eat it? Sigh.)

Last week Senator John McCain rejected the endorsements of to evangelical ministers, John Hagee and Rod Parsley (like the herb) who were caught on video saying some fairly offensive things - al la Jeremiah Wright. I feel the same way about this as I felt about Jeremiah Wright. Hagee and Parsley aren’t running for president, so I don’t really care what they think. I do find it interesting that at least in the case of Hagee, McCain solicited the very endorsement he now denounces in an attempt to curry favor with evangelical voters, many of whom are not thrilled with him as Republican Party nominee. Perhaps McCain could have benefitted from a little research into people he solicits endorsements from, save himself some embarrassment in the future.

A Texas appeals court ruled last Thursday that the state’s child welfare authorities should not have removed 460 children from an FLDS compound last month due to suspicions of child abuse. Oops. Curiously, they did not order child services to to return the children to their families either. I admit, I’m as confused as the child welfare department.

Oil prices hit a record in excess of $130 a barrel last week, driving the price of gasoline above $4 a gallon in many cities. In a related story, the hottest vehicle for sale on the internet classified site Craigslist is the Geo Metro. Perhaps you remember this automotive relic by it’s street name, Poor Man’s (Hyundai) Pony. Amazing what $4 fuel will do to a Hummer driver.

Some people just can’t get it right. In an eventually successful attempt to exterminate himself, a Japanese farmer ingested large amounts of chloropicrin. The problem was that during his temporary stay at the hospital he sickened 56 other people by vomiting toxic chlorine gas. People need to learn to leave other people out of their suicide attempts. Suicide plus one (or 56) is no longer suicide. Keep it simple.

Meeting for the first time in a Long Island nightclub, Lindsey Lohan’s father asked professional party girl and steamy home video star Kim Kardashian and her boyfriend (New Orleans Saints running back) Reggie Bush to look after Lindsey out in Los Angeles and keep a watchful eye on her. Isn’t that a little like putting Vice President Cheney in charge of gun safety at a duck hunter’s convention? Her father (rest his soul) must be so proud.

In the first of two extraterrestrial stories this week, what do you do when you really have to go, but you can’t? Ask the astronauts aboard the international space station. Apparently, the only toilet on the station is out of order. The space shuttle is scheduled to deliver replacement parts this weekend, but that leaves the astronauts with three or four days to practice what I like to call, “creative waste management.” My advice, lay off the fiber, wolf down the chocolate bars, and make sure you remember where you put the laxatives.

NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft touched down safely on Mars at 7:53 EST this past Sunday evening. I find this wholly uninteresting. Been there, done that. When we start landing people on Mars, then I'll make the effort to get excited. But I mention this story for the following reason. If you ever get a chance to watch one of these NASA evens live on television, do it. There is nothing funnier than nerd joy. Seriously, get a group of physicists together in a room, turn on an extraterrestrial robotic landing, break out the popcorn and let the good times roll.

Finally tonight, a 50-year-old Florida man hired a nude maid to clean his Tampa home this past Friday. But while she was there she apparently cleaned him out as well. According to the man, the maid arrived, shed her clothes, and went about her business cleaning the house. He then left her alone in the bedroom to clean. But when his wife returned from vacation, she discovered $40,000 in jewelry missing from said bedroom. I have one only one question for this guy. You went to all the trouble - not to mention the expense of forking out $100 an hour for a NUDE woman, to clean your house. Why the hell did you leave the room! Idiot.